STRATHBLANE WORLD WAR 1: 23 MICHAEL STEWART, PRIVATE KING’S LIVERPOOL REGIMENT, AGED 29.
“You only heal so that there’s someone left to kill!”
A resentful soldier to his doctor.
Although not a native of Strathblane, Michael earned his place on the local war memorial as a result of his employment in the parish. He was born in March 1888 to Agnes Stewart, an unmarried kitchen maid living in Coldoch, Kilmadock in Perthshire (close to what is now Blair Drummond Safari Park). As a young boy, he lived at his grandparents’ house at Coldoch Mansion Cottages, with his mother, as well as one of her brothers and two of her sisters. His grandfather Duncan was employed there as a gardener. Agnes later had another son, Thomas, born in Stirling in 1893, where she was working as a servant.
Duncan and his wife Mary Ann had already raised a large family who had all moved on but they continued to care for Michael and Thomas, aged 13 and seven respectively and both schoolboys when the 1901 census was taken. By this time the household had moved to Little Mill near Thornhill in the adjacent parish of Kincardine-in-Menteith. The Stewarts appear to have had a family connection with this property – once an oat mill – stretching back several generations.
After he left school, and following in his grandfather’s footsteps, Michael worked as a domestic gardener in different locations around the country. In 1911 he was single, aged 23 and employed at Clynder on the Rosneath Peninsula in Argyll.
His connection with the parish of Strathblane was forged when he took the post of second gardener to William Beattie of the breadmaking firm Beattie’s Bakery based in Dennistoun, Glasgow. In 1904 Mr Beattie had commissioned Dinneiddwg, a grand Edwardian country house in Mugdock, from architects Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh, in which Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a partner.
The young gardener moved into the West Lodge. He must have been kept busy tending the extensive gardens, which ran to several acres and included specially designed elaborate hothouses. (The house – at one stage owned by department store magnate Sir Hugh Fraser – still stands today, as does the lodge, though it is now a separate private house.)
Michael enlisted in Glasgow in 1915, originally in the Lowland Division Cycle Corps and was promoted quickly to Lance Corporal. Later, however, along with many cyclists from different divisions, he was transferred to the newly-formed Army Cycle Corps, reverting to the rank of Private. The primary roles of the cyclists were in reconnaissance and delivering messages but they were also armed as infantry with the capacity to provide mobile firepower. Ultimately though, once the war had settled into the stalemate of entrenched warfare, much time was spent on trench-holding duties and manual labour. Michael was later transferred to the 18th Battalion, King’s (Liverpool Regiment), which arrived in France in December 1916.
He was slightly wounded in March 1917, probably during his battalion’s offensive at the Hindenburg Line, where it had joined up with the 89th Brigade of the 30th Division. The Germans were planning a withdrawal to this line, known to them as the Siegfried Line, in order to improve their defensive position. They created carnage on the way by burning farmhouses, poisoning wells, demolishing roads and blowing up abandoned buildings. As a result, the Germans out-manoeuvred the Allies who were ill prepared for the change in strategy.
Such was the desperation for fighting men that within a month of his injury Michael was patched up and sent back to the trenches. Doctors were under great pressure to pass men as fighting fit before they had recovered properly. As one resentful soldier put it in an angry outburst to his doctor: “You only heal so that there’s someone left to kill!”
According to a report in the Milngavie & Bearsden Herald, Michael’s battalion fought on strenuously for a fortnight. Within days he was wounded again, this time more seriously. On April 1 he was admitted to the 20th Casualty Clearing Station with gunshot wounds to the chest and right leg. He died there on April 9, aged 29. By early May, the German army had built a stronghold on this part of the Western Front that was not broken until October 1918.
Michael is commemorated at Warlincourt Halte British Cemetery, Saulty near Arras, France where many of the dead from these battles were taken during April and May of 1917.
As his mother had already died, his next of kin was her younger sister Fanny Stewart who lived in Thornhill, where Michael’s name also appears on the war memorial. His brother Thomas served with the Staffords. Although his time in Strathblane was short, his employer ensured he was remembered as a valued member of his staff and of the community.